Wednesday, September 12, 2012

In 1970 Marc Bolan might have been the
most astute musician in Britain. He saw the tide shifting away from
mellow acoustic rock, so he transformed his folk group into an
androgynous guitar powerhouse that rode the first waves into the glam
rock era. The T. Rex formula was simple: raw electric guitars, men in
mascara, and lyrics so vague that they transcended themselves.

Their best known song “Get it On
(Bang a Gong)” speaks to nearly every decade, and listeners have
foisted all sorts of meaning on the song--unrestrained sexual
promiscuity (probably correct), Christian religious iconography (hmm,
maybe), membership in the Aryan Brotherhood (not likely). It's
difficult to find a rock group that hasn't been compelled to perform
it at least once. Blondie stumbled through it on stage during their
late 70's tours. Witch Queen managed to turn it into an extended
(almost ten minutes!) disco mix replete with a string section and
flanged rhythms. (If you need something cringe-worthy from the era of
polyester pleasure pirates, look no further.) Ministry encased it
with the concrete and black plastic of the industrial scene. Cinema
Bizarre belatedly gave it a 21st-century-retro treatment that sounds
like a lost track from Escape Club's first album. Most recently,
Carlos Santana and Gavin Rossdale managed to rip every stitch of
“untamed youth” from the song and released a version so bland it
could be served for lunch in one of those Florida retirement
mega-facilities.

Each remake says something about the
culture that spawned it, but rather than write a book on the subject
I'm going to stick with a side-by-side comparison of the two most
popular versions: the original T. Rex release and the Power Station
remake.

The two groups couldn't be farther
apart: a rebellious 70s trail blazer and an 80s super group--Marc
Bolan puts everything on display with his just-woke-up hair,
glittered eyes and skin tight pants, while Robert Palmer calmly
smolders in a perfectly tailored suit and tie. Of course, there's
more to this analysis than the lead singers' fashion sense. T. Rex
were pioneers of the early 1970s glam rock scene; Bolan abandoned
mellow folk tracks in favor of more heavily produced numbers, and T.
Rex were one of the few British glam acts apart from David Bowie to
find success in the United States. In sharp contrast, The Power
Station was an almost corporate merger between Robert Palmer and
members of Duran Duran, all but guaranteed popular success. This is
not to say that one group was better than the other, but it does
speak volumes about the public that embraced each act.

The original “Get It On” struts to
a hard-edged R&B beat. Almost every instrument--not just Bill
Legend's drums and Steve Currie's bass--drives rhythm; even Boland's
own electric guitar and Ian McDonald's baritone sax pile onto the
groove. Bolan's vocals shoulder the melody, albeit conversationally,
almost as an afterthought: “Oh this? Yeah, this is the song, baby.”
A brief alto sax melody toward the end punctuates the song's almost
hypnotic cadence. Even though the track is very clean, the song
sounds like a stage recording. It's analog, dirty and sweet, and
Bolan's gasps and moans would be right at home on a porn soundtrack.

No one would call T. Rex's original
“Get It On” the anthem of a generation, but it is the opening
salvo in a musical rebellion. From the first bass licks, it's clear
that T. Rex is intent on beating a gaping hole in the aging hippy
folksinger facade, revealing the androgynous new face of the glam era
beneath.

In contrast, The Power Station put out
a slick version of “Get It On” that cloaked itself in the
trappings of the 80s. The song sets a scene, drags you into a
carefully crafted musical microcosm. Tony Thompson's opening drums
sound like someone kicking the starter on an old Buick over and over
until it fires to life with Andy Taylor's squealing guitar spitting
sparks and backfiring all the way to Wall Street. Every note on this
track has been scrutinized and processed to sound like soul music on
steroids. Amazingly, it works. Palmer snarls, Andy Taylor struts,
Roger Taylor preens, and it all fits together as cleanly as the
circuits in an Apple Macintosh.

What can these two groups teach us
about the culture that spawned them?

T. Rex stood on the cusp of change,
listeners were tired of Scarborough Faire and Mr. Tambourine Man, so Bolan hammered out a new rock paradigm that was refined by artists
such as David Bowie and Slade. This was the era of Vietnam, violence
in Northern Ireland, and college protests gone wrong like the Kent
State shootings, but it was also the era of Mars exploration and
lunar landings. There was a lot of bad stuff going on, and people
were tired of singing about it. They wanted to change it.

The Power Station came online in the
midst of 80s excess, cherry picking talent and turning out a
phenomenal hit that embraced everything popular in 1985. Both
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were in the middle of their terms
of office, and both changed the political face of the 20th
century. Rock bands put on massive charity concerts to raise money
for a plethora of relief efforts. Coca Cola released New Coke, which
was promptly dismissed by the public. There was a lot of good stuff
going on, and people didn't want it to change.

Keep this in mind if you're in a band, and if you're
looking for a failsafe cover song. Maybe you should take a crack at
“Get It On”. Who knows, we might be talking about you in a couple
of decades.